


your spellbound heart

by blue-plums (arabesque05)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Dragons, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2019-09-16 03:19:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16945995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabesque05/pseuds/blue-plums
Summary: there is a new barista at the corner coffeeshop, who always smells faintly of smoke.





	1. Chapter 1

##### i.

There is a new barista at the corner coffeeshop, who always smells faintly of smoke.

“You mean he’s  _smokin’_ ,” says Ino, and waggles her eyebrows lasciviously. “ _Hot_.”

“No, I mean–” Sakura frowns down at the table. “He smells like smoke.”

“Jesus Christ,” says Ino, picking up her cup of something something something something caramel macchiato. Sakura doesn’t know: Sakura drinks her coffee black. Sakura would take her coffee via intravenous drip if possible.

“Do you think he smokes?” Sakura asks.

“After sex?” Ino says.

##### ii.

Sakura has five weeks until med board examinations: the only reason she has not barricaded herself in her apartment to study is because Ino keeps using their coffeepot to hold popcorn or to measure color dye for tie-dye shirts or to give the cat a bath. “It’s the perfect size for Marumaru!” Ino exclaimed delightedly, and Sakura bared her teeth at Ino, and called her an asshole, and went to take semi-permanent residence at the corner coffeeshop, where at least she could be assured of an uninterrupted supply of caffeine.

The new barista is kind of rude and grunts when people place their orders and his handwriting is semi-illegible, but he makes excellent coffee. Also, he says, “Sakura” in this voice, low and dark like mahogany and with a faint rumble, like some giant jungle cat -- it should be  _illegal_ , it’s  _ridiculous --_

“Sakura,” he calls, “large Americano.”

Sakura goes to pick up her drink. “Thanks,” she says.

He grunts.

“Listen,” she says, lingering by the counter. He casts a jaundiced eye at her, disgruntled. “I can’t help -- you have this -- it’s not my place, I know, but you’ve had this cough for a while and you smell like smoke, and I know I’m being super presumptive but have you tried quitting? It’s really not good for you.”

“What,” he says.

“Just -- cigarettes give you lung cancer and emphysema and makes your teeth yellow. I know, I know, murder, arson, jaywalking, one of those didn’t belong -- ”

“Huh,” he says, and tilts his head a little, staring at her fascinatedly.

Sakura feels her face growing hot. “Anyway, I obviously don’t know what you’re going through but if you -- if you want any help quitting, I can…help. If you want -- which you…probably don’t, why would you, you must think I’m a rude, crazy person -–”

“Yeah,” he agrees.

“–- but you’re really hot and it would be a shame if cigarettes ruined your perfect skin.”

They look at each other for several moments. 

“Wow,” he says, eventually, dry like the desert. “You went for broke there, didn’t you?”

“ _Excuse_  me,” says a lady at the register, waiting to order.

“Ah, fuck off,” he calls, and turns back to Sakura. “I’m Sasuke,” he says, and smiles -- sharp as knife, as if to show her his teeth.

##### iii.

Sasuke takes to calling her, “Heeeeey, doc”, when she comes into the shop and when her order’s ready and just -– all the time, even though Sakura hisses at him, “I’m not  _yet_.” 

“Am I jinxing you?” he asks a little meanly, and then, unrepentant, adds, “Heeeeey, doc.”

“Shush,” she tells him, grabbing her coffee from him. “Don’t be a dick.”

“Am  _I_  a dick?” He presses one hand to his chest. “Did  _I_  go up to a stranger and tell them that they’re making at terrible life decision out of the blue? Was that  _me_?”

“I’m  _sorry_ ,” says Sakura and can’t help adding, “But it  _is_  a terrible life decision, I  _strongly encourage_  you to stop smoking. At least cut back. Look, do you want numbers? The research on this is  _conclusive -_ –”

“Heeeey, doc,” he says, “Is this going to take a while?”

It takes them a while.

##### iv.

“I’ve been approaching this wrong,” admits Sakura. Sasuke looks up from where he’s wiping down the counter. The shop is quiet in the post-lunch lull. “I’ve been attacking your judgment, and made this Ii shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”

He squints at her. “Huh,” he says.

“I should have given you options instead, and -– and -– okay -- here.” Sakura thrusts out a thumb drive. She says, “I made you a Powerpoint.”

“What,” says Sasuke.

“A Powerpoint,” says Sakura. “With NIH studies on long-term effects of tobacco use, and if you want to quit cold turkey, or with nicotine replacement treatments, or behavioral therapy, or something else -- they all have different pros and cons and -–”

“Hahaha,” says Sasuke, staring at her again with strange fascination. But he takes the thumb drive, and after a moment, he says, “Thank you.”

##### v.

“Comic Sans,” he says to her later that week. “In hot pink. That’s the font you chose to go with. Really.”

“I had to get my kicks in somewhere, making that powerpoint,” says Sakura. “It was a very long. There were a lot of tables to format.”

“You are just a regular bag of dicks, aren’t you?” he says, half-admiring.

Sakura frowns. “As opposed to -- what? An irregular bag of dicks?”

##### vi.

If anything, Sasuke starts to smell more strongly of smoke after that though. Sakura wrinkles her nose and wonders if he’s started taking smoke breaks. She makes sad eyes at him and half a dozen times opens her mouth to ask, “How many packs are you smoking a day?” or “Did that Powerpoint not make  _any_  impression on you?” but then she remembers that that would not be respecting his life choices which is, they have agreed, a dick move. So sakura doesn’t ask.

Instead, she says, “This isn’t what I ordered? This has like…milk and whipped cream?”

“I had to get my kicks in somewhere, making all those drinks for you today,” says Sasuke, dryly. Then he frowns at her. “Do you know how many coffees I’ve made for you today?”

Sakura stares at him with dawning horror. “Is…is this….is this  _decaf?”_  

“Heeeeey, doc,” he says, smiling.

##### vii.

And then, early one morning, Sakura goes up to the counter for coffee and Sasuke smells like a campfire, like a bonfire, like sooty ashes and burning wood, like a forest ablaze.

Sakura stares at him. “What,” she says.

“Americano?” he says, knowingly. “Large, plain?”

“Did your house burn down or something?” Sakura looks at him more closely: but he does not appear hurt. He is the same Sasuke, tall and dark-haired and more handsome than anyone has a right to be. “Why do you smell like…?” Sakura wrinkles her nose.

Sasuke looks down at himself. “You can smell it?” he says.

“What?” but Sakura knows already: why he smells like smoke, why he always looks faintly amused when she tells him to quit smoking -– she’s an idiot. She says, “Are you a fireman?” -–

-– and he says, “I’m a dragon.”

##### viii.

“Hahaha,” says Sakura. “What? Dragon? Are you high?”

“No. You want to get dinner tonight?”

Sakura stares. The morning keeps getting more and more surreal. “Like…you and me -- on like, a, a date?”

“Sure,” says Sasuke. He looks down at the cash register. “Americano, right?”

“Yeah,” says Sakura, and Sasuke smiles at her, that familiar knife smile --  _oh, fuck_ , realizes Sakura, something flickering in the corner of her eyes, like something very large coiled around the two of them --  _he’s showing off his fangs._

##### ix.

They go out for hot pot that night, their table piled with tofu and wintermelon and cabbage and thinly sliced pork and raw egg dip. Sasuke fiddles with the temperature control. Sakura glares at him.

“But you are not  _actually_  a dragon?”

Sasuke looks up. “Do you want to talk about this? You don’t want to talk about like…first date stuff?”

Sakura gives him an unimpressed look. He laughs a little, the rumble of it like distant thunder; and Sakura is hit again with that sense of something she can almost see, if she just squinted and tilted her head the right way -- a tail somewhere, claws, fangs, scales bright with some inner fire, and more than anything, the impression of something very large, curled around her.

Sasuke props his chin in one hand, and says, “In the west, on the border of Saijo and Kumakogen, there is a mountain -- Ishizuchi. And inside that mountain lives…”

##### x.

After dinner and dessert and some very cute footsie under the table, Sakura says, “So you don’t actually smoke cigarettes.”

Sasuke tilts his head. 

“After sex, I do,” he says, wicked.


	2. Chapter 2

The sex is great,  _fantastic_  even -- Sasuke apparently has no concept of human inhibitions or shame. Sakura asked him, at some point, if dragons didn’t prefer virgin maidens or whatever; Sasuke eyed her blankly, and said, “But you’re  _mine_  now,” as if that was better.

“Oh,” says Sakura, some time later, realizing, “because you  _hoard_  things.”

“What,” says Sasuke, lifting his head from where it had been between her thighs. Sakura makes a protesting sound, wiggles her hips, presses a hand into his hair to push him back down. He doesn’t go. “Did you call me a  _hoarder?”_

“Well, like -– gold, don’t dragons collect gold?”

“I don’t collect  _girls_ ,” says Sasuke, offended. “I’m not a serial killer.”

“Great, wonderful,” says Sakura, propping herself up on her elbows, so that he can see her breasts, with their dusky pink nipples; and the curve of her collarbones; and the line of her neck. Sasuke is inordinately fond of all these things.

“I collect -–” says Sasuke, and blinks. His eyes have bled red, wild. Distracted, his blood runs hot, his grasp on the human form weakens. He shakes his head a little. “I collect -–”

Sakura curls her fingers in his hair and tugs. He goes up to her obligingly. His mouth is hot, like summer; he is tall and large and heavy over her, in the pleasantest way; he bites her collarbone, like a claim -- and they do not speak for some time.

* * *

When Sakura gets out of bed to go to the bathroom, Sasuke sighs and rolls over and fishes a packet of cigarette from his pants pocket.

“I can  _hear_  you smoking _,” S_ akura grumbles, dire. “Why do you smoke in bed? What if you set the bed on fire?”

“What is so great about the bathroom?” answers Sasuke, exhaling a cloud of smoke. He blinks hazily up at it. The bed seems cold for some reason. “Why do you  _always_  go use the toilet like  _two seconds_  after sex? What is so terrible about --” He cuts himself off, takes another drag from the cigarette.

Sakura flushes and washes her hands and goes back to bed, sitting down on the covers by Sasuke’s knee. She looks amused. “Staying in bed?” she asks. “Afterglowing?  _Cuddling_?”

He glowers at her -- but he stubs out the cigarette in the bedstand ashtray and throws out an arm over her pillow and looks painfully put upon, which -- for Sasuke -- is about as close to a blinking neon sign of “COME HERE” as could be reasonably expected.

Sakura climbs under the sheets and pillows her head on his arm. He immediately rolls over and curls one arm over her shoulder and the other around her waist. Sakura tells him, “It’s good practice to pee after sex. It prevents urinary tract infections.”

“Oh,” says Sasuke. “That’s good.”

Sakura laughs, a little absurdly. “Romantic,” she says, “the two of us.”

He pinches her ankle with his toes.

* * *

In the morning, Sakura wakes up to the sound of water running. She gets up and shuffles into the kitchen, puts out food for Marumaru, puts on the coffee, opens up the window curtains. She sits down at the table with some toast and jam and reads the morning paper.

Sakura is halfway through an article about spider web proteins when Ino comes out of her room. “Hey,” she croaks, bleary and eyes still a little swollen with sleep. Sakura pushes over a mug of coffee and plate of toast and half of the newspaper; Ino settles herself in the chair next to sakura. “Thanks,” she says.

They eat quietly for some minutes. Ino drinks her coffee. Eventually, she wakes up enough to frown and say, “Wait. You’re -– then…who’s in the shower?”

Sakura blinks innocently.

“ _Forehead -_ –” starts Ino, warningly -- but then the bathroom door opens.

Steam billows out around Sasuke, who has only a towel around his hips; his hair is slicked back, wet and dark; his shoulders are still damp; a bead of water drips down from his hair, down his neck, down his chest --

Ino drops her toast.

“Hey,” says Sasuke, and goes across the hall into Sakura’s room.

There is silence in the kitchen for some moments.

“ _Forehead_ , I can’t  _believe -_ –” Ino punches Sakura in the arm. “You didn’t breathe a  _word --_ all this  _time --_ you _asshole --”_

* * *

Ino makes her point clearly and violently, and Sakura promises to tell Ino everything, and with death threats that Sakura had better keep her word, Ino leaves for work.

Sakura pours Sasuke a cup of coffee. He comes out of her room and sits down at the table. Marumaru meows and pads under the table to curl at his feet.

“Morning,” she says, pushing his coffee over to him.

He looks at the coffee, and then up at her. “You have an eye booger,” he tells her.

Sakura scrubs a hand over her eyes and also kicks his leg. Marumaru meows again. “Dick,” she calls him. He smiles and drinks his coffee.

“So,” says Sakura, watching him eat toast. “You were telling me about what you collect.”

“No,” says Sasuke, “I was telling you that I don’t  _collect girls_.”

“Okay,” says Sakura. “What do you collect then?”

Sasuke looks at her like she is the biggest idiot in the world. He seems disgruntedly fond. He says, “You, of course.”


End file.
